I have recently acquired a hard tail mountain bike for my daily commuting/thrash about needs and I would like to put slicks on it to make my life a little easier during the week. WTB SpeedDisc Wheel size is 26â€ and the rim width is 24mm. What would be the skinniest tyre that I could possibly put on that rim?

I can find Maxxis Detonators at 1â€, 1.25â€ and 1.5â€ which I was happy with on the flat bar roadie (700c versions) until it was cruely written off by an automobile.

I put some 'cheapie' slicks that I got from Torpedo7 on my 'shopping bike' - they're 1.75 inch and work OK.
You could look at the Maxxis Xeniths as well as the Detonators - and, in the interests of 'answering the actual question' I wouldn't put the "skinniest tyre possible", but rather I wouldn't put on anything less than a 1.5 inch tyres.
ps. I have no real evidence for making that statement, so take it with a (big) grain of salt.

Kalgrm wrote:That rim width of 24mm would rouble me. I wouldn't go thinner than 1.25", but to be safe, I'd say 1.5" would do the trick.

Thats the sort of information I am looking for, I have some 1.5" Torp 7's on another bike for the Wife but its quite hard to find compatability charts for this sort of thing. At this stage, pending Europa's report on his new wheels, the 1.25 might be where I put the safety margin and chance it.

The bent's in a box and probbly on a bus now, so I can't do any more than guess. When it gets here though (give me a reminider if you haven't heard over the weekend), I'll run the calipers over the rim - I'll only be able to give an outside measurement unless I pull the tyres off, but it should give you some indication. To be honest though, the rims don't look like mtb rims and so could be narrower.

Are the rim widths being mentioned here interior (i.e. between the bead seats) or exterior? According to the manufacture specs. my 26" Alex DA16 rims are 22.4mm outer and 16.3mm inner, though that sounds like a rather big inner/outer difference. The bike came with 1.25"/32mm slicks, and I'm now running 1.125"/28mm slicks with no problems. 1.125" looks "right", though I suspect I could go down to 1"/25mm. Sheldon Brown has a guide to rim/tyre width compatibility, but you need to know the interior width.

Ok, I have done some more digging on the rims and pulled up some other numbers:
559 x 17 / 541ERD

Which according to some other threads breaks down to:
The 559 x 17 is what is referred to as the ETRTO dimension. It represents the inside width of the rim 17mm at the specified diameter of 559mm which is the tire bead diameter for 26" tires. The 541 ERD refers to the
"effective rim diameter" in Millimeters. This is the distance from outside
eyelet to outside eyelet 180 degrees apart. This dimension is needed to
calculate spoke lengths.

So Just like hotdog my original quoted 24mm figure and the 17mm from the other figures on the sticker on my rims seems like a big difference in inner and outer measurements.

So according to sheldon's site and assuming that I am correct in assuming that I have 17mm inner measurement I could get away with the 1inch (25mm) tyre. Thats a lot of assumptions/dodgy math. But it might just work.

Right, now you need to ask yourself why you want to go so thin. One of the joys of the Detonator is their soft sidewall, they're a tyre that rewards the 'bag of air' thinking when it comes to comfort. As I understand it, this bike will be your hack, so slightly wider tyres for a bit more comfort might be better than thinner for dubious aero advantage.

How quickly do you want to make this choice? You could wait until my bent arrives and then have a look at them on the bike - sure, the rims are narrower but you might still get a good idea of what they're like.

europa wrote:Right, now you need to ask yourself why you want to go so thin. One of the joys of the Detonator is their soft sidewall, they're a tyre that rewards the 'bag of air' thinking when it comes to comfort. As I understand it, this bike will be your hack, so slightly wider tyres for a bit more comfort might be better than thinner for dubious aero advantage.

Richard

True, its probably more me working out what I really want to get out of the 'hack' bike (i.e. the philisophical bit). At the moment I am quite prepared to wait until we see what they look like on your bike before making the decision. It will definately be a new years project.

Right, the trusty calipers tell my rims are 19.6mm, outside measurement (ie, brake face to brake face). The 1" Detonators are a neat fit on those rims, they look like 23mm tyres do on road rims - the 28mm Detonators on my road bike are more bulbous.

Therefore, I wouldn't fit them on wider rims than mine and may indeed go for the next size up when I wear these out.

europa wrote:Right, the trusty calipers tell my rims are 19.6mm, outside measurement (ie, brake face to brake face). The 1" Detonators are a neat fit on those rims, they look like 23mm tyres do on road rims - the 28mm Detonators on my road bike are more bulbous.

Therefore, I wouldn't fit them on wider rims than mine and may indeed go for the next size up when I wear these out.

Richard

Thanks for the update, so i think I will be looking at the 1.25" tyre.

I'd agree with all of the above, but found their puncture resistance to be a little disappointing, especially in the wet. In the week after NYE last year when it rained much of the week they seemed to be a magnet for little bits of glass, and I had 6 punctures in 5 trips. But there was a lot of glass around, and they were good up to then.

Slime in the tubes solved the problem in the short term. I have a set you can have for whatever it costs to post, slimed tubes included. I'll throw in a couple of new boxed unused tubes as well, as they're now just taking up shelf space. The back tyre has a few nicks but I did probably a further 500-800km with it like that, so I reckon it's OK to ride. Worst case: you get at least one good tyre and some new tubes for a few bucks.

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